There’s a couple of rib recipes in Simply Delicious, but this one’s probably the most basic. It’s still a bit too cold out to BBQ, but 7-5: Spareribs gives you a pretty decent oven method of cooking ribs. As is usually the case, the inspiration for these came from needing room in my freezer after picking ribs up on sale somewhere a month or two ago.

Simply Delicious seems to echo my sentiments. However, their choice of the creepy pig doll for the recipe picture was less than optimal. Anyway, this is pretty easy to do, not that hard to clean up, and works pretty well. Sounds like a winner to me.

It’s suggested you can use your own blend of herbs instead for barbecue sauce–we’ll use that as justification for a few liberties I’ll have to take.

Ingredients. First major substitution: I used back ribs instead of spare ribs. It’s not a HUGE deal, but there is a bit of a difference. I wasn’t sure what they meant by “chili sauce“, so I left out minced garlic and used chili garlic sauce. Lastly, I was feeling lazy, so I used onion powder instead of chopping/dicing an onion.

“Barbecue” sauce mixed up. The chili garlic sauce makes it pretty spicy–feel free to use something else if you’re not in the mood for that much heat.

Underside of the rib rack, on top of the cooling rack/sheet pan roasting contraption I came up with.

Brushing the rack with my barbecue sauce. This brush is a silicone brush, but a normal pastry/cooking brush works too.

After the first round of roasting. Both sides get brushed one more time with the rest of the sauce.

After the full roasting time. For being cooked in the oven, they’ve got some good color.

Cutting into them to see if they’re cooked–looks good to me. Still pretty tender, but definitely cooked through.

I made these to eat as sort of a TV dinner while we watched one of the endless US presidential debates in the last few weeks. I figured the easiest way to eat them on the couch was to cut them all up, grab a lot of towels, and set up a second bowl for bones.

Final close-up of the ribs. They were pretty good, had some heat from the chili garlic sauce, and definitely hit the spot. Even though they weren’t spareribs, they were still pretty darn good.